Photographer's Note

Haiphong is Vietnam’s fourth largest city. It is an important seaport and the centre of industry in north-east Vietnam. You rarely see many tourists there, but there is some interesting French colonial architecture in the centre of the city. It is a fairly sleepy place, considering it is home to over 1.5 million people, but the river is always buzzing with activity. During ‘rush hour’ the ferries across the Cam River from the city to Thuy Nguyen District on the north side of the river will be packed with people on their bicycles and motorbikes. A ferry like this will take four cars (tickets are 12,000 dong each – about 80 US cents) and as many passengers as can squeeze on (passenger tickets are 500 dong each – about 3 cents). I took this shot on the Thuy Nguyen side after getting off the ferry, and just after the four cars had driven down the ramp, allowing the mass of the passengers to ‘expand’ – so you can imagine how crowded it was before the cars drove off.

I had to do quite a lot of PP on this as I shot this on Kodak EB-2 film and the transparency had a bad scratch in the sky – so I had to fix that first in PS. Then I put it through Neat Image as it was quite noisy (a consequence of the transparency being stored in hot and humid conditions), then some adjustments in curves as it had a slight magenta cast, and finally USM.

Considering all the post processing that you had to do, the photo looks very "natural". Nice job with an interesting subject. I like the contrast between the bright & sharp colors vs. the muddy water. The multiple repetitions of hats pointy hats is interesting.